As the Sept. 11 novel is still a relatively new genre, it takes guts to write the following sentence about watching the World Trade Center collapse: “But Joyce felt something erupt inside her, something warm, very much like, yes it was, a pang of pleasure, so intense it was nearly like the appeasement of hunger. It was giddiness, an elation.”

Such blasphemy makes up much of Ken Kalfus’ satire “A Disorder Peculiar to the Country” (HarperPerennial, $13.95), but before blasting the author for insensitivity, understand that Joyce is middivorce, really wants the apartment, and her husband, Marshall, works on the 86th floor of the falling tower.

Kalfus’ post-9/11 version of “The War of the Roses” will offend some readers more than it entertains them, because amid “a rising mushroom-shaped column of smoke, dust, and perished life,” Joyce experiences “a great gladness” while Marshall, thinking his wife was on United Air’s Flight 93, skips through the streets after escaping the collapsing carnage.

But like the best satirical writing, Kalfus uses fury and indignation to raise valid points. His are about selfishness, the vagaries of divorce and the way national tragedy plays out in individual lives.

“A Disorder Peculiar to the Country” was a finalist last month for the National Book Award.

Also recently released in paperback:

“American Genius” by Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull, $15): Tillman’s experimental novel centers on a woman living in what is either a scholar’s retreat or an institution. Through a fascinating monologue, the narrator free-associates on everything from Charles Manson groupies to socks and skin, revealing bits of her childhood and family life.

“American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang (First Second, $16.95): Yang’s graphic novel explores questions of cultural identity and self-acceptance in a middle- and high-school setting. The story braids three narratives involving the Chinese fable of the Monkey King, a Chinese-American student and a character built around negative Asian stereotypes.

“Eat the Document” by Dana Spiotta (Scribner, $15): Spiotta’s novel examines lingering effects of 1960s and ’70s radicalism through Mary Whittaker, who changes her identity after a bomb plot goes awry. Two decades later, raising a curious teenage son and suffering through a detached life in suburbia, she considers turning herself in. This was a National Book Award finalist.

“Illicit” by Moises Naim (Anchor, $13.95): The editor of Foreign Policy magazine provides a tour of contraband ranging from knockoff purses to weapons and human organs. Along with examining how globalization created a smuggler’s paradise, Naim explains how illicit activities are “upending the rules, creating new players and reconfiguring power in international politics and economics.”

“The Design of Dissent” by Milton Glaser, Mirko Ilic (Rockport, $30): For readers in search of a consciousness-raising coffee-table book, this showcase of international posters and art from the 1960s to the present offers plenty of eyebrow-raising cultural critiques.

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